Corrie MacLaggan News Editor

Corrie MacLaggan
is the Tribune's news editor. Previously, the Austin native worked as a national correspondent for Reuters, writing and editing stories about Texas and nearby states and overseeing a network of freelance writers. Before joining Reuters, she covered Texas government and politics for the Austin American-Statesman, writing about everything from gubernatorial races to food stamp application backlogs. She spent her first year at the Statesman writing for the newspaper's weekly Spanish-language publication. She has also worked in Mexico City, where she wrote for publications including the Miami Herald's Mexico edition, Latin Trade magazine and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Her first reporting job was at the El Paso Times. Corrie is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied journalism and Spanish.

In Leon Toubin's dreams, Jewish life would again be vibrant in Brenham, where he cares for the synagogue where generations of his family worshipped. But Jews are not moving to Brenham, so Toubin has arranged to move Texas' oldest Orthodox synagogue to Austin.

State leaders tout the so-called Texas miracle – the idea that the economy here is thriving thanks to their small-government approach. But not everyone benefits. Here are the stories of six Texans who've found little relief in the Texas miracle.

State leaders in business-friendly Texas have been reluctant to put new limits on any industry, and a lack of regulation is being acutely felt by the low-income borrowers to whom the payday and auto-title lending industry most often caters.

There were 84 Hispanic veterinarians in Texas in 2010, making up less than 2 percent of the state’s 5,728 veterinarians, according to the 2014 book Changing Texas, whose lead author, Steve H. Murdock, is the former state demographer.

Child Protective Services caseworker Juan Carlos Pacheco rents a spare bedroom in his childhood friend's home in Odessa. He has also lived in a trailer with five other people and a one-bedroom apartment with six other people. His own family lives in El Paso.

The oil boom has brought jobs and prosperity to Midland and Odessa, but it has also driven up housing prices, making it difficult for the Department of Family and Protective Services to hire caseworkers.

Texas sends people who want to make cash payments under the Driver Responsibility Program to ACE Cash Express, which last week agreed to pay $10 million to settle allegations that it harasssed borrowers.

Texas-based payday lender ACE Cash Express has agreed to pay $10 million to settle allegations by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that it used illegal tactics to push borrowers into a cycle of debt.

In Texas and across the country, the birth rate among teenagers has declined significantly. But Texas has not fared as well as other states. The Lone Star State has the nation's fifth-highest birth rate among teenagers.